Natasha Degen, Director, Sotheby’s Institute of Art-New York

Betty Parsons: An Expanded World
Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
June 27–October 18, 2026

Betty Parsons is widely regarded as one of the most influential gallerists of the twentieth century, having launched the careers of major Abstract Expressionists, including Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman.

She also mounted Robert Rauschenberg’s first solo exhibition and gave Agnes Martin and Ellsworth Kelly their first New York shows.

But she was also an artist in her own right. Betty Parsons: An Expanded World will be Parsons’s first major retrospective, building on renewed interest in her art sparked by recent exhibitions at Alexander Gray Associates in New York and Alison Jacques in London.

I’ll be especially interested to see how the exhibition explores the interplay between her artistic practice and her work as a pioneering gallerist.

Morgan Falconer, Faculty, MA in Contemporary Art and MA in Historic Art and Design, New York

Marcel Duchamp
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Until August 22, 2026

Most people know Duchamp through only a handful of early readymade sculptures, like his infamous Fountain, the urinal he signed with the pseudonym “R. Mutt,” in 1917. But MoMA’s full retrospective shows his career to be much richer, starting with post-Cubist paintings and spanning photographs, drawings, and much else.

It’s a reminder that Duchamp pursued a new kind of career as an artist, one driven by ideas rather than style. Even for the artist’s lifelong enthusiasts, this show has surprises.

Artwork: Marcel Duchamp. To Be Looked at (from the Other Side of the Glass) with One Eye, Close to, for Almost an Hour, Buenos Aires 1918. Oil, silver leaf, lead wire, and magnifying lens on glass (cracked), mounted between panes of glass in a standing metal frame, 20 1/8 x 16 1/4 x 1 1/2 in (51 x 41.2 x 3.7 cm), on painted wood base, 1 7/8 x 17 7/8 x 4 1/2 in (4.8 x 45.3 x 11.4 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / Association Marcel Duchamp.


Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
October 4, 2026–January 31, 2027

When Pollock was alive, his wife, Lee Krasner, placed her own work second to his, and after he died in a car crash in 1956, she often remained in his shadow, seen merely as the widow.

Yet there has been a lot of excitement about Krasner of late, both in museums and in the market, and the power of her work—particularly in the 1970s—is now receiving more recognition.

This show at the Met promises to bring the tale full circle, placing the couple’s work together and highlighting their artistic partnership.

Marcus Verhagen, Senior Lecturer, MA in Contemporary Art, London

Jesse Darling: Godsworth
Oude Kerk Contemporary Art, Amsterdam
Until September 27, 2026

Jesse Darling’s work is made up of everyday objects brought together in configurations that speak to the vulnerability of the human body and the oppressive weight of social convention.

For his show in Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk, a large Gothic church that now serves as a contemporary art space, he has created an environment that is at once a building site, a ruin, and a sanctuary.

A huge piece of blue fabric hangs from the vault like an outsized ghost or saintly apparition. An old cabinet filled with flowers and empty bottles conjures the aftermath of a party, but also looks faintly like an altar.

Multicolored festoon lights draw attention to an ancient tombstone. And the floor of the church is covered in mounds of sand and debris. It is a brilliant and unsettling exercise in site-specificity that seems to describe a time of social breakdown or post-disaster reconstruction.

Tim Goossens, Program Director, MA in Contemporary Art, New York, and Faculty

Ten exhibitions curated for the official opening of Kanal-Centre Pompidou
Kanal-Centre Pompidou, Brussels, Belgium
November 26, 2026

Brussels has been a hub for contemporary art, not just due to its affordability (compared with Paris and London) and central geographic location, but also because of the many (international) artists who have made it their home base and excellent cultural institutions such as Wiels and Bozar.

Known for its loyal and informed collector base, the capital of Belgium is also home to outposts of several important international galleries, such as Gladstone from New York and Martins & Montero from Brazil.

The Pompidou satellite museum’s opening exhibitions this fall include a selection of over 350 masterpieces from the museum’s permanent holdings; significant solo presentations from artists including Joshua Serafin; and several ambitious group exhibitions, such as An Infinite Woman, featuring works by Carrie Mae Weems and Faith Ringgold.

The museum is housed in a renovated Citroën factory by the canal, just a short walk from the city center.

© Atelier Kanal